A Comprehensive Website for News Headlines

The below site, while not covering everything, does offers a lot of info in one place.

Newspaper Headlines:

http://www.marcellus-shale.us/Gas-Drilling_NEWS.htm

DEP finally waking up

PA Must Take Action to Protect Water Resources from Drilling Wastewater, Other Sources of TDS Pollution

Proposed Rules will Help Keep Drinking Water, Streams and Rivers Clean

HARRISBURG — High levels of total dissolved solids pollution from natural gas drilling and other sources pose a real threat to Pennsylvania’s streams and rivers, including aquatic life, warned Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger today. “The treating and disposing of gas drilling brine and fracturing wastewater is a significant challenge for the natural gas industry because of its exceptionally high TDS concentrations,” said Hanger. “Marcellus drilling is growing rapidly and our rules must be strengthened now to prevent our waterways from being seriously harmed in the future.” Hanger pointed to recent examples where TDS impaired streams and affected major sources of drinking water….

To read the full DEP release, click here:

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/newsroom/14287?id=10349&typeid=1

PennDOT Closing Elk Run Road to Gas Well Traffic

PennDOT is advising motorists in Tioga County that State Route 3001
(Elk Run Road) in Gaines Township is being temporarily closed to gas
well traffic due to severe deterioration.

The road is open to local traffic only until repairs are made.

Responsible parties are being contacted to facilitate repairs to restore
the roadway to a safe and passable condition for the traveling public.

This road carries a year-round, 10-ton weight restriction.

Natural Gas: Not as clean as you think

Just in case you’ve seen the television ads being run by ANGA (America’s Natural Gas Alliance) and think they are telling you the whole story….here’s some of the other side.

http://wilderness.org/content/natural-gas-not-clean-you-think

Use your feet…

Here is an email from the Responsible Drilling Alliance out of Williamsport, PA. please follow the link at the end of the message for more info.

Use your feet to protect our rivers.

Have your feet take you to the hearing in Williamsport on December 16th to support, with your presence, the proposed new rule for Total Dissolved Solids for gas industry wastewater.  Gas drilling waste water is extremely high in TDS.  Under current rules they are allowed to discharge this TDS content directly into the river.  The new proposed rules would greatly limit new TDS discharges.

Not surprisingly these new proposed rules have come under quite a bit of pressure from a number of industries not just the gas drillers.  It is important to note that these new rules will not apply to existing water discharges so they will not put anyone out of business. Only new discharges or large modifications to existing plants will come under them.

This September, more than forty miles Dunkard Creek in western PA was cleared of almost all its fish and other aquatic animal life by the toxins of an invasive algae.  Golden Algae, the culprit,  needed high levels of TDS’s to thrive. Last summer, even before the fish kill,  the Monongahela  River exceeded the TDS standard for potable water intake and its bromide content level required a health advisory to be issued.

Strong public support is needed to counteract industry’s efforts to lower the proposed standards.    We all need to show up to the hearing and speak or send in written comments.  Instructions on how at bottom of this email.

December 16, 2009 5 p.m.	Department of Environmental  Protection Northcentral Regional Office Goddard Conference Room 208 West Third Street, Suite 101 Williamsport, PA 17701-6448 http://pabulletin.com/secure/data/vol39/39-45/2065.html

Next Years Severance Tax (better late than never?)

House to focus on drilling issues next year

by robert swift (harrisburg bureau chief)
Published: December 1, 2009

HARRISBURG – House Democratic leaders are making taxation and regulation of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation top priorities next year.

The effort will get started with statewide hearings by the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee and House Democratic Policy Committee, said Majority Leader Todd Eachus, D-116, Hazleton.

A renewed push to enact a state severance tax on gas production as well as legislation to address drilling-related issues ranging from protection of water supplies to royalties for landowners is part of the legislative focus.

“We are going to take up the issue of the Marcellus Shale extraction tax,” added Eachus in a recent interview. “We really think the development of the Marcellus Shale should have a social benefit.”

Interest in the impact of drilling activities in the Marcellus formation underlying Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania built steadily this year stemming both from fiscal concerns over the large state revenue deficit and environmental concerns highlighted by the recent federal lawsuit by 15 families in Susquehanna County alleging that Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. damaged their health and property.

Earlier this year, Gov. Ed Rendell proposed a five percent severance tax modeled on the West Virginia levy while the Department of Environmental Protection hired additional gas well inspectors with revenue from a fee hike on oil and gas exploration permits.

Rendell eventually said it would be premature to implement a severance tax for fiscal 2009-10, but House Democrats rallied behind the idea and included it in their version of the budget bill. The final $27.8 billion budget is without a severance tax. This is mainly due to because of opposition from Republican lawmakers who said a tax would discourage drilling companies from creating new jobs.

Rendell thinks the timing is right to include a severance tax as part of the 2010-11 budget, said John Hanger, acting Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection.

“The governor is open to what the details of the severance tax would be,” he added.

One unresolved issue is the distribution of severance tax revenues.

“My (bill) would devote gas revenues to both the municipality and the county where natural gas is extracted, the Liquid Fuels Fund (for local road work), as well as to LIHEAP (low-income heating), environmental stewardship and state government,” said Rep. Camille George, D-74, Houtzdale, the environmental panel chairman.

Other drilling issues await Harrisburg’s attention.

George wants action to protect the existing 12.5 percent royalty to property owners for gas production on their land. He is awaiting a decision from the state Supreme Court on whether the royalty is to be calculated after deducting post-production expenses such as processing, marketing and transportion from the producer’s proceeds.

Cornell Cooperative Extension Natural Gas Development Resource

http://gasleasing.cce.cornell.edu/index.html

This site provided by Cornell Cooperative Extension Natural Gas Development Resource Center has a lot of good info on it. Most of the events are old but the info about them is still there and as you scroll down the page there are links to other resources as well as explanations of answers to a lot of the questions that local residents have. If you are just starting to get involved with educating yourself or others on this topic it’s a great site to check out.

What, we have regulations in PA?

Once again the gas industry representatives make note that having drilling regulations for natural gas at the federal level is ridiculous because it is already regulated at the state level…….except that states like PA can’t seem to regulate it at a state level! But what can you expect when the governor and various other politician’s elections have been paid for and supported by the natural gas industry. They would like us to think that it is “that simple” because that would make things simple for them all the way through this 30-50 year process. The Frac Act needs to happen sooner rather than later.

House caucus hopes to call attention to natural gas resources

Thursday, October 22, 2009

By Daniel Malloy, Post-Gazette Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — “We are swimming in natural gas,” declared billionaire oil man T. Boone Pickens at a House of Representatives hearing yesterday.

And Pennsylvania is the deep end of the pool.

The Marcellus shale deposits constitute enormous potential for domestic fuel production, and Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, formed a natural gas caucus in the House to call bipartisan attention to the issue.

At the caucus’ first hearing yesterday — borrowing a room from the Science and Technology Committee — the keynote witness was Mr. Pickens, whose high-profile “Pickens Plan” advocates energy efficiency and domestic resource production as near-term goals.

“Natural gas is going to be the bridge to the next transportation fuel,” Mr. Pickens said.

Mr. Pickens said the United States is home to the equivalent of 350 billion barrels of oil in domestic natural gas reserves, and much of that is in Pennsylvania. Penn State professor Robert Watson estimated that in 10 years, the Marcellus shale could generate 175,000 jobs per year and $13 billion in the commonwealth.

In order for that to happen, the gas advocates argued against strict regulation for the industry and for incentives to promote the fuel.

Ray Walker, vice president for Marcellus shale driller Range Resources, said federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting natural gas, would be a mistake, because it is already regulated at the state level and, he claimed, is environmentally sound when done correctly. He also argued against a proposed change in tax accounting methods for the industry.

Mr. Pickens said government can promote natural gas by giving incentives for companies to switch their diesel trucks to run on the cleaner-burning fuel over time. Such a measure, he said, can cut America’s oil imports in half.

“I went to the White House and they said, ‘It can’t be that simple,’ ” Mr. Pickens said. “But it is that simple.”

Advancing legislation is not that simple.

Natural gas is not addressed in the Waxman-Markey climate change bill that narrowly passed the House in June, and Mr. Murphy introduced a bill in May pushing for more efficiency and domestic fuel production from natural gas and offshore oil rigs — but it went nowhere.

He’s still holding out hope that some provisions for natural gas can make it into a final compromise energy bill, as the Senate has yet to move very far on climate change.

Mr. Murphy was able to bring in Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., as co-chair of the natural gas caucus, which now boasts 45 members, Mr. Murphy said. More than a dozen congressmen from both parties attended the hearing — including Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Centre.

“This is what I think the nation expects us to do,” Mr. Murphy said after the hearing.

“There was no jockeying for position there. Everyone just wants to be on board. We have almost a 50-50 split of Republicans and Democrats, and we expect it’s going to continue to grow.

“This is good news. You’ve got people who, if you didn’t know what initial was after their name, you couldn’t tell, in terms of what questions they were asking, the support that they were offering and the optimism that they feel for America. That’s really something.”

Funding Cuts Mean Potential Collapse of Environmental Oversight in Pennsylvania

October 15, 2009
Press Release from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation

(HARRISBURG, PA)—The Chesapeake Bay Foundation expressed grave concern over environmental funding cuts in the recently adopted Pennsylvania budget that threaten to further reduce Pennsylvania’s commitment to clean up rivers and streams, and fail to provide much-needed environmental oversight and funding to limit impacts from Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling.

“The budget approved last Friday rolls back years of progress in cleaning up Pennsylvania rivers and streams.” said Matthew Ehrhart, Executive Director of CBF’s Pennsylvania office. “It contains the biggest cuts ever made to environmental programs in the history of the Commonwealth.”

The new state budget reduces the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) personnel by $21.1 million, representing over 300 people responsible for implementing the agency’s environmental protection duties. The inequity of these cuts is stark—the 26.7 percent reduction in the DEP budget was nearly triple the average 9 percent cut other state agencies took in this budget.

“Not only has state government cut the Department of Environmental Protection by over 26 percent, it has failed to find the over $600 million in funding DEP says is needed by farmers and others to meet the mandates of the federal Clean Water Act to cleanup the watersheds contributing pollution to the Chesapeake Bay, Ehrhart said.”

The cut to DEP staff raises significant concerns about whether the agency can conduct basic and mandatory environmental protection duties. Without adequate staff, permits necessary for new business activity will not get reviewed and issued.

“Without the boots on the ground, full enforcement of environmental laws will not occur,” Ehrhart said.

Drastic cuts were also made to the only new resource the state has contributed to clean water in the last six years, namely the Resources Enhancement and Protection Program (REAP) farm conservation tax credit program, which was cut by 50% to $5 million this year.

In addition to cuts at DEP, the already understaffed conservation districts, a key player in water cleanup efforts, were cut by $600,000.

“Without the on-the-ground help provided by the conservation districts, not only can’t we spend the state dollars we have for farm conservation work, we will not be able to take full advantage of funding available through the federal Farm Bill to help our farmers install conservation practices.”

The new budget also eliminates completely the modest $2 million available for county stormwater management planning, another key element in reducing nutrient pollution from runoff, and reduces basic sewage planning and enforcement by 40 percent.

These cuts exacerbate a trend of cuts to critical clean water programs seen in the last several years which total almost half a billion dollars. They include:

• $376 million reduction in grants to support wastewater treatment plant operations over the last six years;
• $100 million diverted from the Growing Greener Program to pay for other programs and pay down the debt on bonds; and
• $5 million cut from the highly successful REAP farm conservation tax credit this year.

Another environmental funding crisis looms as Growing Greener funding will run out in 2010, leaving a gaping multi-million dollar hole that must be filled.

“We believe many of these clean water funding gaps can be filled through the adoption of a severance tax on natural gas production being developed by out-of-state companies in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale gas fields,” said Ehrhart. “These companies stand to make billions of dollars over the next several decades exploiting a Pennsylvania natural resource just like coal, timber and oil companies did in the past. This time, we need to be smarter and require these companies to contribute so that impacts to our land and water resources caused by their exploitation can be offset.”

Instead of passing a severance tax, lawmakers and the Governor agreed to open up our state forest lands to more drilling. While a valiant effort championed in the House of Representatives successfully limited the scale of this drilling, the severance tax ultimately did not meet demands of the Senate, nor the Governor, who had originally called for a severance tax as part of his initial budget proposed back in February. Yet the Marcellus Shale gas boom continues at an unprecedented rate, and environmental impact is mounting. In September, DEP ordered Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation to cease drilling operations after three separate chemical spills polluted streams and wetlands and caused a fish kill in Susquehanna County.

“In order to ensure the protection of our rivers and streams and prevent a battle over our public lands every year, we call upon the General Assembly to pass a severance tax as soon as possible,” said Ehrhart.

“Balancing budgets in tough economic times means establishing priorities, holding the line on spending, being creative about new revenue sources, and cutting non-essential funding,” said Ehrhart. “But the cuts made in this budget fail to prioritize both federal and state mandates to clean up our most precious, fundamental resource—our water. Our state government is not doing the job it is required to do by law and we all will pay the price for years to come.”

http://www.cbf.org/Page.aspx?pid=1453 This is the link to their website if you want more info or want to know more about the organization themselves. They also have a quarterly publication called “Save the Bay” that has an article about the gad drilling crisis. You can download it from their site or actually join the organization and get the quarterly publication in the mail.

Two Days Remaining….

Please make sure your voice is heard by Wednesday! This is a very well written letter by Don Williams and I encourage you all to write your own or contact me for a template you can use.

At midnight on Wednesday, October 7th, the period for public comment on a permit request to dump treated gas well waste water into the Susquehanna River will close. Last week, about 60 residents gathered at the local DEP office to speak out against this permit. It is my sincere hope that you might also be willing to send an email to DEP expressing your concern over this planned toxic waste discharge into the river. Your message need not be long. Two or three sentences are sufficient. It is necessary to include your full name and mailing address in the text of the message. Please state clearly that you are opposed to allowing TerrAqua to dump treated water into the river. Addresses and a sample message appears at the bottom of this FreshMail.

At last week’s public hearing, those in attendance spontaneously broke into applause at the close of Don Williams’ prepared statement. Perhaps his views (below, in italic) will give you some food for thought as to what you might say to DEP officials.

Gas well drilling is here to stay. It is my belief that the industry’s presence here is a greater threat to public health than anything I have ever seen in my lifetime. All the organic food and vitamins in the world cannot counter balance the toxins we will all be exposed to. If you live in Pennsylvania, you will be impacted. Please be willing to stay informed and take action whenever the opportunity arises. Begin now. Thank you.

Barb Jarmoska

Good evening. I’m Don Williams of Harleysville, PA, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. I am a native and citizen of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and my ongoing education includes a bachelor’s degree in earth and environmental sciences from Wilkes College. In 2005, I partnered with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and American Rivers to name the Susquehanna River as the most endangered river in the nation. It appears we may be soon approaching that point again.

As an environmentalist who witnessed and participated in the first earth day, I continue to marvel at the infinite wisdom of Rachel Carson’s choice of three simple words – web of life – to describe all of nature. Almost 40 year after the first earth day – we are now at a point where this commonwealth’s commitment to protecting the environment is – in truth – heading toward where it was 40 years prior to 1970. In the present day Marcellus Shale frenzy, we are once again striking a Faustian bargain at the expense of our natural resources, jeopardizing the quality of our land and our waters in exchange for the false promise of jobs and fleeting economic prosperity for a limited few.

A detailed DEP study done earlier this year concluded that about 980,000 pounds per day of assimilative capacity remains for total dissolved solids on the West Branch. TerrAqua’s draft discharge permit allows between 54,412 and 522,245 pounds per day of total dissolved solids to be discharged to the river.

Let’s crunch these numbers a little further. This equates to 15.7 million pounds of solids – containing far too many unknowns – being dumped into the west branch of the Susquehanna every month. That’s about 95 tons per year. And that’s from one treatment plant. If we continue to accept frackwater in a growing number of new treatment plants on the north branch as well, what will our watershed, and our waters, look like next year…or 5 years from now, and what will we leave as our legacy for future generations?  Where is the tipping point of assimilative capacity? I certainly don’t know, however, having studied numerous detailed environmental modeling failures over the past three decades, I truly do not believe the DEP knows either.

In May 1971, just about one year after the first earth day, the following amendment was added to the Constitution of this commonwealth:

“The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”

Webster’s defines pure as: “unmixed with any other matter” and conserve as: “avoid wasteful or destructive use of”. So far, from my perspective, it appears that many of our state and federal agencies have differing views on exactly what these words mean.

I am fully opposed to the further degradation of the Susquehanna River by any action or from any source. Further, until there is a complete disclosure of any and all chemicals used in the horizontal hydro fracturing process, I am requesting that any action on any/all frackwater treatment plant applications be suspended indefinitely.

As a citizen of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and per our Constitution, I believe these are our lands these are our waters. What is happening throughout the Susquehanna and Delaware and Ohio watersheds today, and how we react to it, will be our legacy to those generations yet to come. I believe that the “state of independence” is much, much more than a tourism slogan. From Dimock to Dunkard Creek, from Lake Otsego to the Chesapeake Bay, and from Harrisburg to Washington, we must do all that is necessary to ensure our gift to the future includes cleaner waters, cleaner air, and a Penn’s Woods we will be proud to leave behind. Thank you.